Vol. 4.

GIFFORD Could not have looked at Lady Wroth's book.

Alchemist. Ep. to the Reader. Dances and antic marring the drama at that time.

S. EVREMOND, vol. 3, p. 207-8, praises Sejanus and Catiline, and condemns all other English tragedies. See the passage.

"Ir appears that he read Greek invariably, not by quantity, but accent." Vol. 5, p. 339, N. In the text that occasions this note, the line is,

"Old Master Gross surnam'd Ayéλaotos,”

which yet would read by quantity, if the true reading of the preceding word should be surnamed. But Gifford says it was his invariable rule.

His contempt of romances, with which he oddly classes Pantagruel. Vol. 5, p. 346; 8, p. 416-7.

The metre in his Ode to himself (vol. 5, p. 442), a ten-lined stanza, is sufficiently varied by the different length of the lines, though the rhymes are in couplets.

P. 417. Gifford assents to O. Feltham's criticism,

"When was there ever laid

Before a chambermaid

Discourse so weighed, as might have served

of old

For schools when they of love and valour told ?"

Now though the discourse is very ill laid considering some of the company, the ob

391. Bride-ale, a note showing that Gifford did not know what the word means. 454. Going away in snuff (in anger) Gifford thinks alludes to the offensive manner in which a candle goes out. I rather think it refers to a sudden emotion of anger, seizing a man as snuff takes him by the nose.1

See the extract from SOMERS' Tracts, in Second Series, p. 654.-J. W. W.

regard to the Chambermaid, who is what Ben Jonson remembered female domestics to be, upon the same footing as pages in the family. The one in this play is the friend and companion of her mistress, and thought a fit wife for a nobleman at the end of the drama.

Vol. 6.

P. 2. THE actors, when the Magnetic Lady was first represented, introduced so

many oaths, that they were called before the High Commission Court, and severely censured. As the author was sick in bed, they boldly laid the fault on him. Jonson however completely justified himself from this atrocious charge, as did the Master of the Revels, on whom they had next the audacity to lay it and the players then humbly confessed that they had themselves interpolated the offensive passages.

11. "I have heard the poet say that to be the most unlucky scene in a play which needs an interpreter."-Induction to the Magnetic Lady.

250. Gifford says he was a careful reader of the Polyolbion, and in the Sad Shepherd an occasional imitator.

222. Inigo Jones satirized.

Vol. 7.

P. 19. GIFFORD thinks Milton's Arcades "a very humble imitation of Ben Jonson's masques."

36-7. Dances described in the Masques. 39. 65. 108. 157. 324-5.

16. A double echo finely managed in a

song.

79. Masque scenery. 302. Splendour. 328.

"Sit now, propitious aids,
To rites so duly prized,
And view two noble maids
Of different sex, to Union sacrificed."
Masque of Hymen, 53.

77. Gifford calls "the attention of the reader to the richness, elegance, and matchless vigour of Jonson's prose," upon occasion of a very beautiful passage, which he does not perceive to be an imitation of Sydney's

manner.

94. It only cost the masquers about £300 a man for that on Lord Haddington's marriage.

114. Dedication of a Masque to P. Henry. 151. Bel-Anna, James's Queen, a name in which he plainly remembered Belphœbe. Gifford says it is evident that Jonson had made some progress in a work intended to celebrate the ladies of Great Britain.

164. Allusions to Morte d'Arthur. 165. And to Meliadus, which Gifford, by his note, seems not to understand.

265. In the Golden Age Restored he calls up Gower and Lidgate with Chaucer' and Spenser.

269. The first folio which Ben Jonson superintended himself has "come down to us one of the correctest works that ever issued from the English press.”

274. Excellent personifications in the Masque of Christmas.

298. Dr. Aikin has called Ben Jonson "this once celebrated author!" and speaks of the prevalent coarseness of tedious effusions!

305. "The tail of a Kentish man." Thus this was still a current jest.

311. G. Chalmers' glorious confounding of Titan with Tithonus.

cows." This odd inversion is in some very

sweet verses.

144. The description of the two loves, Eros and Anteros, is that they were both armed and winged; with bows and quivers, cassocks, breeches, buskins, gloves, and perukes alike.-Love's Welcome at Bolsover.

151. In the dedication to his Epigrams he calls them the ripest of his studies. 154. To my bookseller. He requests that his book may

"thus much favour have To lie upon thy stall till it be sought: Not offered, as it made suit to be bought, Nor have my title-leaf on posts or walls, Or in cleft sticks advanced to make calls, For termers, or some clerklike serving man Who scarce can spell the hard names; whose knight less can.”

169. On Sir John Roe. His own anticipation of death. A fine manly strain. 170. 186. Repentance for some ill deserved eulogy.

Of worded balladry

And think it poesy?"

418-19. What the fire destroyed. 442. To the Painter. His own person described.

446. Wager upon his weight.

448. Gifford does not see that this piece relates to the former.

452. To the Lord Keeper Williams. 459. Charles sent him £100 in his sickness, 1629.

Vol. 9.

P. 4. BEN JONSON and the Earl of Newcastle.

6. Lord Falkland.

78. Gifford's praise of his Pindaries. But N. B. that word was not prefixed to it by

Jonson. 9.

17. It appears by this note that the edition is not so complete as Gifford might and ought to have made it.

27. An Epistle Mendicant.

35. In this Epithalamion he seems to have had Spenser in mind.

37. Porting for carrying.1

43. Laureate's petition to King Charles. 47. Sir Ken. Digby-a sad conceit. 95. A divided rhyme:

"when or

Diana's grove, or altar, with the bor-Dring circles of swift waters," &c. 161. Envious criticism in his age, and success of worthless works. 162.

169-70. His own memory.

172. A vicious tinsel style in vogue. 173. 174. "Dabbling in verse had helped to advance men both in the law and gospel; but poetry in this latter age hath proved but a mean mistress to such as have wholly addicted themselves to her, or given their names up to her family."

176. His opinion of precocious talents.

rous and silky style.

180. Of his own style.

183. Lord Bacon. 184-5.

184. Prose writers, Bishop Gardiner called admirable as such-"now things daily fall, wits grown downward, and eloquence grows backward; so that he (Bacon) may be named and stand as the mark and ȧkμn of our language."

"If there was any fault in his language," says Dryden," it was that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially."-Essay on Dramatic Poesy, p. lxxv. See there for Dryden's opinion of

Ben Jonson.

See Censura Literaria, vol. 1, p. 94. Monthly Review, vol. 15, p. 198, Month. Cat. for Aug. 1756, Whalley's Ben Jonson, "To say that we look upon this as the best edition of Ben Jonson's works, will be saying enough for an article of this kind."

rial commands frequently interrupted him. He had plainly no sinecure as Poeta Cesareo!

LORD STERLINE.

DRUMMOND says, "This much I will say, and perchance not without reason dare say, if the heavens prolong his days to end his day, he hath done more in one day than Tasso did all his life, and Bartas in his two weeks, though both the one and other be most praiseworthy." - Extracts from the Hawthorden MSS. p. 28.

Ibid. p. 31. Drummond's notes for an elegy upon him. Here it appears that the supplement to the Arcadia is by him.

"Factions breaking loose

Like waters, for a time by art restrain'd, Their bounds once pass'd, which do all bounds disdain."

Alexandrean Tragedy, p. 128.

DRYDEN.

CONGREVE (Dedication to his Plays) says, "I have frequently heard him own with pleasure, that if he had any talent for English prose, it was owing to his having often read the writings of the great Archbishop Tillotson."

An atrocious assertion in some Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton, extracted from the Memoir of T. Hollis, that Dryden "was reprehensible even to infamy for his own vices, and the licentious encouragement he gave in his writings to those of others."Monthly Review, vol. 62, p. 483.

Essay of Dramatic Poesy.

Crites says in this Essay, "it concerned the peace and quiet of all honest people, that ill poets should be as well silenced as seditious preachers. xxxi.

P. xxxii-i. Contemporaries whom he cen-
He seems greatly to

sures.

xlix. Cleveland. have disliked him.